April M. Rimpo

Representation by Agora Gallery

2011-12-30T22:24:00.002-05:00

Poinsettia Tree

April's water media paintings are now available through Agora Gallery's ARTmine. Go to April's ARTmine site to see what paintings are currently available.

April will be included in an exhibit at Agora Gallery in 2012. Agora Gallery is located at

530 West 25th Street, New York, NY
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 6pm

Tel. (212) 226 - 4151

Paintings at Bernice Kish Gallery

2011-10-13T22:37:00.002-04:00

Venice III

The current exhibit at Slayton House's Bernice Kish Gallery shows artwork by the Baltimore Watercolor Society. Two of my pieces are in this exhibit. "Venice III" received an Honorable Mention award. "Venice III" was highlighted in an article in Howard County Times article on the exhibit. You can see the article online at
"Watercolor exhibit is awash with talent and vision" by Mike Giuliano

Pigeon Keeper

Click here to see all the award winners.

Sometimes it is the detail that makes the painting

2011-09-25T21:57:00.001-04:00

A Day at the Fountain © April M. Rimpo

A Day at the Fountain celebrates the joy of children at play. I composed this pieces from a series of photographs I took while visiting Charleston, SC. A sense of motion was a critical element of this painting; motion of the water, the running children. My goal was to catch a moment in time. In order to get this sense of motion it was important to get the detail of the water spray. My favorite child in this painting is the young girl in the orange and red striped swimsuit who is featured in the blowup on the right. The young man in front was the focal point of the painting, but the nearly pointillist appearance of the girl is an important detail used to capture the moment.

Building a Painting

2011-04-02T22:37:00.008-04:00

The slideshow below describes the process of painting "Venice III". Double click on the image to view the slideshow in full screen mode.

The finished painting is shown above.

2011-03-27T18:52:00.001-04:00

The Maryland Federation of Art is currently holding their 34th Annual "Art on Paper" National Exhibition. The Juror was Johanna Halford-MacLead. April's piece "Poinsettia Tree" was one of 78 works selected for this exhibit from ovre 1100 entries from 344 artists. It is an honor to be among those chosen. The exhibit can be seen at Circle Gallery, 18 State Circle, Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday through Sunday from llam - 5pm, now through April 17th. You can also enjoy the exhibition online by clicking on the link below. Take the time to view the entire exhibition by clicking on each camera. You can see my piece from a couple cameras, including "360 Art Exhibition Part 4".

Above Image is April's painting "Poinsettia Tree"

http://www.panoramastreet.com/live/Demos/MDfederationofart/

Celebration of the Arts

2011-03-19T20:06:00.000-04:00

Each year Howard County Arts Council sponsors an annual "Celebration of the Arts" in Howard County. April will have two of her glass pieces in the auction, to be held on March 26, 2011 from 6pm to 10pm. The auction will be held in Howard County Community College's Rouse Company Foundation Gallery. A preview of the auction pieces is availabel for the artists, family and friends on March 26th from 1pm to 4pm. Howard County Community College is located at 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, Maryland.

Color Schemes

2010-12-24T12:28:00.001-05:00

Frequently when taking art classes the instructor will discuss color schemes in your art. Monotonic, Complementary, Adjacent, and Triad color schemes are those most frequently discussed. Even though this is common knowledge I find I need to be reminded regularly or I drift off course, using too many colors to have good color harmony in my work.
I recently learned about a website called "Color Scheme Designer" that is intended for web designers, but can be quite useful to painters as well. You can plan not only with the color schemes mentioned above but also Tetrad and Accented Analogic. While playing on this site http://colorschemedesigner.com/ I discovered I had used a Tetrad design in one of my most successful paintings this year. See if you agree?

For future reference I have added Color Scheme Designer to my links.

Holiday Sales in December

2010-12-01T22:36:00.002-05:00

Click here to see larger version

Image of April's fused glass

Exhibit at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County

2010-11-06T13:43:00.000-04:00

I have two paintings, based on my travels to Guatemala, on exhibit in this Laurel Art Guild exhibit at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County. I just love the native clothing worn by the women in Guatemala. My work tries to bring these women to life. The pieces in this exhibit show a girl relaxing before her day at the market and a contemplative age-worn women waiting outside her church. I hope you get to enjoy this exhibition which runs until January 17, 2011.

Never Stop Experimenting

2010-07-22T07:49:00.000-04:00

A Quiet Moment

This painting was done on nine 5" by 5" Aquabord that were 2" deep. Normally I work on either cold press or hot press paper using a lot of wet-into-wet techniques, so this was my first experiment with Aquabord. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I could blend colors on this medium.

My decision to use nine segments for this painting required me to design the piece taking into account the 1/4" gaps between the Aquabords. I wanted to make sure that each segment of the painting was an interesting painting of its own. That made placement of the girl critical and the abstraction of the patterns in her clothing important to ensure the viewer's eye continues to move through the entire piece.

Knowing galleries would not want to deal with hanging 9 separate pieces, I attached these to a piece of Plexiglas and drilled a hole in the Plexiglas for hanging.

Out of the Sun

2010-04-07T20:56:00.001-04:00

Out of the Sun

This painting was inspired by the wonderful architecture in Antigua, Guatemala and the affects of the sun shining through the pillars and archways. This painting captures the mood of the people relaxing in the shade, the great patterns created by the sun, the glow of reflected light on the inside of the pillars, and the halos that surrounded the people about to emerge from the shade at the end of the walkway.

I created this painting using a combination of fluid acrylic and watercolor on hot press paper. I love the texture I can create using fluid acrylics and the great blends of colors possible with watercolor. This painting is currently on exhibit at Kentlands Mansion in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It was awarded 2nd place in this exhibition of Baltimore Watercolor Society Signature Members. A reception will be held on April 20th from 7:00 - 8:30 pm .

Painting for a themed exhibit

2010-02-28T10:53:00.006-05:00

Normally I paint based upon inspiring things I have seen or places I have visited. I have thousands of photographs I have taken that I combine and morth to recreate a feeling I experienced or a vision that I think will draw others into my work. Lately I have decided to enter some socially themed exhibits and have found this way outside my comfort zone. Instead of starting with inspiration I start with someone elses concept and try to find something I share that fits the theme.

This feels much like being in school trying to answer an assignment; not something that makes the juices flow. Often I abandon the exhibit when nothing comes. Sometimes I can play around with ideas long enough until something that does inspire me finally arrives. Do you have techniques you use for these themed exhibits?

"Celebrate" (shown below) is the final work I created in response to the "Cupcakes for Claudia" exhibit in support of the courageous journeys of those coping with cancer. The reception for the exhibit will be held on April 16th, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm.

Self Critique

2010-02-01T08:19:00.003-05:00

You have no doubt read or heard about many approaches to critiqueing your own work. Some include looking at the painting in a mirror, standing at a distance, putting the piece away and looking at it in a few weeks. All of these are attempts to have you look at your art in a more objective fashion. They can also force you to stop painting to assess, which may save you from overworking, a big danger for those of us who work in watercolor.

I have found that photographing my work as I go is a tremendous help to me. I generally photograph after each painting session on larger works. Writing down your thoughts about what you see in the photograph is also very helpful in forcing you to be objective. I note what I like and what is not quite working. This approach seems to help me see where I need to increase or decrease value changes or adjust the color. I am always surprised when I look at my photographed work..sometimes in a positive way and sometimes not. Either way I know I end up with a better painting in the end. This approach may help you; give it a try.

Keep Painting

2009-10-06T21:55:00.009-04:00

Frequently when working in watermedia the paint has a mind of its own. It runs around the paper doing all kinds of things you haven't planned. Normally this is just what watermedia artists love in the finished work because the appearance is something you can't achieve with other media. However, other times the paint does things that seem overwhelming. This blog describes such an accident that would have made me stop the painting when I first started to use watercolor.

The slideshow below shows a portion of a recent painting of a Guatemalan Family where the fluid acrylic yellow ochre background ran across the woman's wrist and across the waist of the standing woman. The acrylic dried so quickly I was only able to wash it off the standing woman's waist, but not off the wrist. The acrylic had absorbed into the cold press watercolor paper within s few seconds. I feared I had a disaster on my hands.

Since I had just started the painting I considered stopping and starting over, then thought I might as well keep painting and see what happens.

At the time of the first photograph in the slideshow I had put a pale flesh colored wash over her face and her arm to see whether it had any affect on the yellow ochre acrylic run across her wrist. You can see the run was still very obvious.

I decided to let the paper dry thoroughly and then continue to paint the woman's dark skin tones and clothing to see whether it covered the acrylic run. All of this was done in transparent watercolor since that was my desired medium for the figures in the painting.

To my surprise, the transparent watercolor had covered most of the run. It is only obvious on the right edge of the wrist. See the second painting in the slideshow.

I knew the skirt of the standing woman would be dark blue, so I kept painting. At the time of the third photograph only the light part of the skirt was complete, but the blouse of the standing woman was done. The faint run of acrylic at the waist of that figure can no longer be seen.

In the last photograph, the dark skirt is complete and the yellow ochre acrylic is no longer obvious.

Its essential not to panic and try to scrub out the paint or paint back in too quickly. The result will be to damage the paper and then the eye will be drawn to the damaged paper and an overworked spot will always standout.

Combining Fluid Acrylic and Watercolor

2009-09-19T12:56:00.022-04:00

After taking a fluid acrylic workshop from Nicholas Simmons I decided I finally had the tools at my disposal to paint "Marbled Orb Weaver". I had photographed this little spider a few years ago when he decided to hang from the side of my garage. I had been waiting for a technique that would allow me to paint her accentuating the marbling on her thorax while maintaining her glow. I wanted the background to be marbled as well, so she appeared comfortable in her surroundings. Fluid acrylics in combination with a "paint and remove" technique that Nicholas had shown us did the trick.

After experimenting with approaches to create the linear marbling for the background on scrap paper I decided I was ready to give it a try.

The marbling and all hard lined edge work was done in fluid acrylic. I started with the spider to make sure I could achieve the look that I wanted. Once satisfied with the marbled edges, I covered the spider with masking tape and worked on the background. I had used masking fluid earlier to paint the web so that paper would remain white.

I chose a complementary color for the background compared to the vibrant orange and yellow of the spider. In addition to the "paint and remove" technique I used very runny paint so I could get great drips throughout the background. Once the marbling looked right, I used a very thin wash of fluid acrylic and opaque watercolor to add soft blue and lavendar tones to the background.

I chose fluid acrylic for most of the background since I knew once I removed the masking tape I may need to adjust the marbling on the spider and I didn't want to wash off the background.

A very wet into wet watercolor wash was used to add the spider's bright orange and golden coloring. Using watercolor for this step allowed the spider to glow in a way that I don't think I would have achieved with acrylic alone. After adding a few detailed darks and touching up the web, Marbled Orb Weaver was ready for prime time. This slideshow shows the major stages of the painting.

The following slideshow depicts the major steps described.